Witness Essentials: Watcher v1.0.4 (Important Update)

Witness Essentials: Watcher received a small but important update (v1.0.4) which is mandatory if you're running v1.0.3, as the previous version included a small bug, which would result in an endless-loop without failing-over.

Besides this bug-fix, this update also includes two minor tweaks:

alerts are now sent if the witness has recovered
in case of API hickups to get the witness data, the round will be skipped to prevent unnecessary failover.

Github

https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher

Pull Requests:

What is Witness Essentials?

Witness Essentials is a collection of important tools for witnesses.

Witness Essentials: Watcher is a script for Steem Witnesses to watch for missed blocks, failover towards backup-nodes & alert via multiple services.

Multiple alert options available (TELEGRAM, SMS <NEXMO, TWILIO>, EMAIL)
Transaction signing either via private signing-key or private active-key
RPC Failover
Rotation between keys supported
Robust error handling

Github Organization: https://github.com/witness-essentials

Getting Started

You can find a detailed guide on Github

Update Information

Before I get into the update: please look over the code yourself if you're using it. I'm not taking responsibilities for it to be bug-free, but I'm doing my best, as I use the code myself for my witness servers.

I'll try to work on unit tests as soon as I find the time, but for now, everything should work.

The bug-fix was pretty much only this:

// If a block has been missed before, but witness node has recovered and signed a new block
    if(_g.MISSED_BLOCK_FLAG && witness.last_confirmed_block_num > _g.last_confirmed_block_num) {
      .... other code
      // Move from here 
     // g.last_confirmed_block_num = witness.last_confirmed_block_num
    }

    // to here
    _g.last_confirmed_block_num = witness.last_confirmed_block_num

Explanation: _g.last_confirmed_block_num is the last signed block of the specific witness. If the last_confirmed_block_numof the newly fetched witness object is higher, then that means the witness has signed a new block. If _g.MISSED_BLOCK_FLAG is also true, then that means the witness previously missed a block, but then recovered and signed a new one.

In 1.0.3, _g.last_confirmed_block_num was only updated in case of a missed block, which would result in the code treating it as if the witness has recovered. While in reality, the _g.last_confirmed_block_numwas simply not updated. Thus resulting in an endless loop and the bug-fix was it to update it every round.

Alright, that's it for v1.0.4.

All the best,
Wolf

^{Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.}